Norman Graves and the IGU

A few weeks ago, we heard that a sesssion proposal that I put in has been accepted for the IGU.

The International Geographical Union (IGU) has its centenary conference in Paris in 2022.

Its title is: 

Developing a curriculum framework for Geography at national level

The session is described as follows: 

The Geographical Association (GA) has pursued its mission ‘to further geographical knowledge and understanding through education’ since 1893, during which time it has undertaken successive exercises to reframe the school geography curriculum in the UK and further afield. 

One of the GA’s flagship initiatives at present is a fundamental review of curriculum thinking in geography education. 

This initiative has taken a very wide range of evidence and perspectives into account in order to produce a geography curriculum framework that is informed by research and practice, reflects the contemporary world and discipline and can be used by the Association to exert influence on national and international curriculum conversations in the future. 

Its presentation, for discussion, at the IGU’s centennial conference continues a long tradition of GAIGU engagement, involving former GA Presidents including Norman Graves and Sir Dudley Stamp. There will be inputs, possibly remote or pre-recorded from those people involved in the development of the curriculum framework: an initiative led by Eleanor Rawling, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Oxford Department of Education. 

The curriculum framework will be introduced, along with a description of some of the other projects which influenced the thinking. Key issues around such work will be explored, with reference to other national curricula. 

One aim is to create a ‘Curriculum Vitae’ - a curriculum for life: to engage young people and equip them with key questions that they will carry forward with them beyond their schooling. The Climate Emergency and other global issues should be threads running through any new curriculum, but teachers need support in considering how such issues can become objects of study, so that they may be examined in school without the attendant real-world pressures we otherwise face when dealing with complex social, political and environmental challenges. Should this be part of the framework, or the associated guidance? Such questions will be discussed. 

The curriculum framework also creates opportunities for teachers to develop deeper (powerful) knowledge and equip students with choices about whether and how they wish to act, as well as a better understanding of how and why others do/do not act in the same way. 

Current GA President Alan Parkinson was previously the Geographical Association’s Curriculum Leader and is a practising teacher with much experience in developing curriculum artefacts and vignettes to help bring curriculum documents to life. Ideas for breathing life into the framework will also be explored and shared. This will hopefully be the start of a renewed international conversation about curriculum: to reconnect with each other after several years of enforced separation.

If you would like to get involved, please get in touch. The IGU website will be reopened during December and early January for the submission of papers and there will then be a selection process to create the programme for the session that I will chair.

I will be channelling a former GA President who was heavily involved with the IGU for many years, and wrote this excellent book in 1979: Professor Norman Graves. He has his own entry on the blog. It will also draw on the current work of another former GA President: Eleanor Rawling.